Rescuing Jargon from the scrapheap… first in a series.

From the Jargon File

LART: Luser Attitude Readjustment Tool.

1. n. In the collective mythos of scary devil monastery, this is an essential item in the toolkit of every BOFH. The LART classic is a 2×4 or other large billet of wood usable as a club, to be applied upside the head of spammers and other people who cause sysadmins more grief than just naturally goes with the job. Perennial debates rage on alt.sysadmin.recovery over what constitutes the truly effective LART; knobkerries, automatic weapons, flamethrowers, and tactical nukes all have their partisans. Compare clue-by-four.

2. v. To use a LART. Some would add “in malice”, but some sysadmins do prefer to gently lart their users as a first (and sometimes final) warning.

3. interj. Calling for one’s LART, much as a surgeon might call “Scalpel!”.

The BOFH (Bastard Operator From Hell) is Simon Travagila, and he is an evil SYSOP from the University of Waikato, the place that is so post modern that hardened members of the women’s studies department fear to go there. (Please note that in better universities women’s studies AKA gender studies has either been subsumed into sociology, or is no longer offered).

As a true BOFH, Simon’s work is copyright, but is available at the Register.

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